Toast of Tuesday: DIY Distressed Mason Jar Centerpiece

Having just moved into our brand new home, one of my first orders of business has been to decorate. Much to the distress of my pocketbook, I love the Pottery Barn look. But instead of spending oodles of money on mass produced knickknacks, I’m attempting to decorate as much DIY as possible.

Today I’ll take you on a super easy and fun tutorial for creating a budget friendly dining room centerpiece for a fraction of what it might cost from a place like PB.

I love drooling over perusing the PB website for inspiration on my projects. For the dining room table, I loved the look of this mirrored tray with candles:

Copyright Pottery Barn. Link to photo and product in above text.

However, I did not particularly care for its $79 price tag (and that’s without the candles, mind you!).

I also liked the look of this rustic vase for holding a cluster of white hydrangeas, but again, the price tag of $49.50 was far too much:

Copyright Pottery Barn. Link to photo and product in text above.

So, armed with Pinterest, off to the craft store I went! At the craft store I picked up some large mason jars, just $2.99 each at Michael’s. While there, I also got some chalk paint for $7.99 per jar. I bought two colors, grey and creamy white, to add some dimension to my projects. Oh, and I splurged on a nice paintbrush as well!

What we’ll need for the vases.

After laying down some paper towels to keep my work space clean, I simply painted a couple of layers of chalk paint on each of the jars, doing two jars in white and one in grey.

Fun fact: The Ball brand of mason jars is crazy expensive. These were much cheaper.

I intentionally left the paint a bit sparser in some areas, and more thickly coated in others, because I really love the unique rustic look.

I let them dry all afternoon, although they probably were dry after only an hour or two. Meanwhile, I headed out in search of a copycat mirrored tray like the Pottery Barn one I had fallen in love with.

Lucky for me, Kirkland’s had one very, very similar to the PB one, at a fraction of the cost ($19.99 as opposed to $79).

So in my bag it went, and off I went in hunt of some decent looking fake flowers and a pillar candle. I don’t know about you, but in theory I’d love to keep my kitchen stocked with fresh flowers every day, but 1) they’re expensive, and 2) I’ve got a bit of an allergy to many flowers.

These heavy duty wire cutters were a must for trimming my fake flowers.

After the mason jars had dried, I simply rubbed the lettering with grade 80 sand paper (though I think any sand paper would do in this case). I then used some heavy duty wire cutters to snip most of the steams off my faux hydrangeas, arranged the vases and candle in the tray, and voila — a Pottery Barn inspired centerpiece for a fraction of the cost!

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial. With so much decorating to do, I’m sure there will be more DIY decor tutorials to come!